On the Way to Upper Secondary School: GISA Prepares for Its Next Major Development Step

GISA is growing – and with it, the opportunities available to our students. Over the past few years, the secondary section has been developed step by step. With each additional grade, an important long-term goal is moving closer: a complete educational pathway at GISA through the end of Grade 12.

A central part of this development is the mixed-language International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme, known as the GIB. It is a special form of the internationally recognised IB Diploma Programme that combines the German educational profile of a German School Abroad with an internationally oriented upper-secondary qualification. Depending on the subject, teaching and examinations take place in German and English. German therefore remains a key part of the school’s profile, while the programme also opens up an internationally recognised pathway for our students.

For GISA, the GIB is therefore much more than a new qualification. It offers the opportunity to continue the development of our secondary section consistently and, in the future, to provide students with a complete educational pathway from Kindergarten through to Grade 12 at one school.

The next major step is planned for the 2028/29 school year, with the introduction of Grade 11. Until then, there is still substantial development work ahead: subject combinations need to be planned, teachers prepared and trained, language pathways strengthened, and the organisational and physical conditions put in place. University and career guidance, independent learning and academic working methods will also become increasingly important.

An important impulse for this development came in September, when Headmaster Rainer Kropp-Kurta completed the four-week IB workshop “Head of School – Diploma Programme Category 1”. The workshop confirmed GISA’s strategic direction and also underlined that successful upper-secondary education does not begin only when students enter Grade 11.

Skills such as independent learning, research, reflection, collaboration, presentation and the purposeful use of feedback need to be developed over many years. This is also where a major opportunity for the whole school lies: preparing for the GIB can provide impulses far beyond the future upper secondary section – for teaching and learning, language development, staff collaboration, assessment and increasing student responsibility.

“The path towards the GIB is not simply about introducing a new qualification. It is the consistent continuation of what we have been building at GISA for years: a complete, academically ambitious and internationally oriented educational pathway for our students,” says Headmaster Rainer Kropp-Kurta.

This development also fits particularly well with the school’s guiding idea, “Building Bridges”. As a German International School in Ghana, GISA already brings together different languages, cultures and educational traditions. The GIB offers the opportunity to continue this strength into the upper secondary years – with a clear German profile and, at the same time, a strong international perspective.

Over the next two school years, GISA will continue to develop the necessary structures step by step. This includes planning the future subject offer, preparing teachers, further strengthening German-language support and learning from schools that already offer the GIB successfully. A working visit to the German Embassy School Addis Ababa is planned for January 2027, whose experience will be particularly valuable for GISA’s own development.

Rainer Kropp-Kurta sees this as an important next step: “We do not simply want to copy an existing model. We want to look carefully at which experiences fit our size, our students and our profile, and then develop a GIB model that is genuinely sustainable for Accra and for GISA.”

The path to 2028 will be demanding – but above all, it offers major opportunities. GISA is developing from a growing school with a secondary section into a school with a complete and internationally recognised educational pathway through Grade 12.

For our students, this means one thing above all: more opportunities for their future – in Ghana, in Germany and around the world.